Last year, Brown travelled to Moscow with a group of French anti-gay activists to speak to members of the Russian Parliament in support of a spate of anti-gay laws. He then travelled back to Moscow to help organize what was then supposed to be the World Congress of Families summit. Brown is scheduled to be in France this weekend to lead a training for activists with the anti-gay group Manif Pour Tous. We’ll keep an eye on news reports to see if Brown does in fact speak at the Kremlin conference tomorrow. [see update]

The Americans were in the company of several leading Russian political figures.

According to Russian news reports, the conference kicked off today with the reading of a personal message from Russian President Vladimir Putin about the importance of large families, the conference’s theme. “With large-scale demographic challenges in many countries eroded moral values, the real crisis is going through the institution of family,” Putin wrote, according to a (rough) Google translation of his statement.

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